Did you know that about 140,000 people in Canada have epilepsy? This is a huge number and considering that around 60% get diagnosed before the age of 20, it leaves the burden of choosing therapy options heavily on the parents.
About 70% of all those people who have epilepsy are put on medication as their main form of treatment, but as you can imagine these drugs can be expensive and have severe side effects.
In fact, 61% of those who reported having side effects, also reported that the side effects have a moderate to extreme impact on their lives.
Not to mention that the drugs don’t even work on 10% of the people who are taking them.
Ketogenic diet for epilepsy – The best treatment option:
Another Possible Treatment Option For Kids Who Are Suffering From Epilepsy.
What if I told you that kids might improve their epileptic seizure activity just by changing their diet.
It might be surprising to some of you that this treatment has been validated by many scientists over a decade now and does not involve any medication. ( will talk about this later in this article ).
What Is A Ketogenic Diet:
keto diet as it is known today has been in existence for over 90 years for almost a century.
The ketogenic diet for epilepsy was designed in 1924 by a doctor at the Mayo Clinic.
Despite being highly effective in treating epilepsy, it fell out of fashion due to the surge in new anti-seizure medications in the 1940s.
The ketogenic diet for epilepsy is a special high-fat low-carbohydrate diet that helps to control seizures in some people.
With epilepsy it is one of the oldest treatments, it is intended to maintain the starvation of our fasting metabolism over a long period of time.
There Are Probably A Ton Of Questions Going Through Your Minds Right Now So Let’s Talk About This Diet.
This diet is called the ketogenic diet, and there are few variations of it.
The classical ketogenic diet consists of approximately four to one weight ratio from fat – carbohydrates and proteins
What’s different between the ketogenic diet and other diets on the biochemical level:
There are three main differences on the biochemical level,
The ketogenic diet and variations of it led to a significant increase in the total ketone body levels in the subjects. Ketone bodies are one of the products of fat metabolism.
Those on the ketogenic diet had lower glucose level after their meal
And lastly, there is a down-regulation of the glycolysis pathway in those on the ketogenic diet. for those of you who don’t know glycolysis is a before the breakdown of glucose, so makes sense that when the glucose levels are lower after-meal glycolysis is also down-regulated.
Ketogenic Diet And Childhood Epilepsy:
The initial use of the keto diet had nothing to do with weight loss or diabetes management, for which it is now so well-known.
Instead, the die was created by a doctor in 1924 to help his patients suffering from epilepsy.
Epilepsy is a nervous system disorder that can bring on recurrent seizures at any time.
Symptoms Of Epilepsy:
The symptoms can be spasms and convulsions, or an unusual psychological view of the world. In any case, it is caused by abnormal brain activity.
The severity of the symptoms varies from person to person, but a person is diagnosed with epilepsy if he or she suffers from more than two seizures in one full day.
Anyone can suffer from this disorder, but it seems to affect young children the most, perhaps because the young brain is still in a state of development.
New Treatment Of Epilepsy:
As far back as 1924, however, Dr. Ryssel wilder of the Mayo Clic conducted groundbreaking research and created the ketogenic diet to help children suffering from epilepsy.
It was remarkably effective, but doctors lost interest when new anti-seizure medications came on the market.
It was easier for them to prescribe medication than to discuss diet.
However, drugs frequently manage seizures, sometimes they work, sometimes, they don’t.
And People who used the Keto diet to treat seizures continued seeing remarkable success.
